Why It Is Essential to Ensure That a Truck's Wheels Are Properly Aligned

The humble tyre. It's a very well engineered piece of equipment that is designed to put up with a lot of stress. It's also a component that is designed to wear out, over time and most vehicle owners try their best to elongate life, in order to save money. One of the best ways to achieve this is to ensure correct alignment, and this is relatively straightforward on a car, but very much more challenging on a truck. Why the additional challenge and what can be done to ensure best practice?

What Can Go Wrong?

The primary difference between car wheel alignment and truck wheel alignment lies in the fact that there are far more axles to consider in the latter case. Car owners only need to worry about aligning the front wheels for best operational efficiency, but truck owners must focus on all the other axles as well.

Where to Start?

Certainly, it is most important for any truck owner to focus on aligning the axle that is connected to the drivetrain. This is the place to start, to ensure that the wheels are properly aligned to travel in a straight line. The other axles also need to be both perpendicular and parallel to the centreline of the vehicle, otherwise issues can occur.

What Happens with Misalignment

Axles that are not parallel to each other will create unwanted forces when the vehicle is in motion. These actions will effectively be trying to push the vehicle away from the straight and narrow, causing the driver to have to constantly readjust the steering wheel as he or she drives. The effect may not be instantly noticeable, but it will certainly be causing additional effort and extra costs to boot. If the axles are parallel to each other, conversely, but not perpendicular when measured against the centreline of the vehicle, this is known as a "thrust" issue. This is also an unwanted scenario.

Unwanted Side-Effects

The misaligned axles on the truck will cause additional wear and tear in two different ways. Firstly, the very front tyres (that do the steering) have to be constantly turned away from the true angle and this will cause the sidewalls to wear more quickly than they should. This is also the case as far as the misaligned rear axles are concerned. Furthermore, the vehicle will consume more energy in this constant phase of realignment, meaning that the fuel economy will suffer over time. Some drivers also complain that the constant steering correction causes them to work harder behind the wheel, leading to issues with fatigue.

Getting Them Fixed

With so much at stake and an organisation's profitability on the line, it's essential that all wheel and tyre tandems on a truck are correctly aligned by a professional.